It opens with Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s famous statement about the government having no right in the bedrooms of the nation, preceding the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969. The film looks at the early Gay Liberation Movement, including the We Demand Rally that took place in Ottawa in 1971. From here, Parade takes us through infamous events such Toronto’s bathhouse raids, and protests in response to how the government was handling the AIDS epidemic. The film finally touches on the BLM activists who controversially shut down Toronto Pride in 2016 to protest the presence of uniformed police (a decision still highly debated about, since others view police being allowed to march as progress). The most insightful and engaging parts of the film are the perspectives of older activists who talk about what it was like growing up gay in Canada while homosexuality was still being criminalized, leading to arrest or hospitalization in a mental institution. Among the subjects is Svend Robinson, the first openly gay Member of Parliament in Canada, who talks about his office being vandalized after coming out in 1988.
The documentary is a solid primer on topics that are vital to Canadian history and culture. And it also isn’t meant to be entirely bleak, sorrowful, and angry. There are moments of heartbreak, depression, and sadness, but the film also illustrates how much love and warmth was at the heart of these equality movements. It’s both critical and uplifting at the same time. The film takes pains to note that the realities and challenges facing gay men, lesbian women and trans people were often quite different. Other groups, including the Black community, the East Asian and South Asian communities, Two-Spirit Indigenous people and the Latinx community were also coming together to create their own organizations that reflected the needs and wants of each group. As expected, the whole HIV/AIDS section is the most impactful of them all. As many of the interviewees notes in the film, it is important to remember and honor the trailblazers who took the brunt of changing the culture towards one that was more inclusive and affirming of queer identity. The battle continues, with some of the same arguments and actions made against the queer community in the 1960s and ’70s being repurposed and repackaged today. (5/10)
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